Moneyball without the ball

About

Welcome to my blog

My name is Lsigurd and I plan to use this blog to share the research that I do for stocks that I am purchasing in my own accounts. The model account I will use to track my portfolio has been active since July 1st, 2011.

Who am I?

I don’t think that investing acumen can be taught. Everyone has to find their own investing personality, and the only way you can do that is by getting into the market and figuring out what works for you. I made a conscious choice to bypass the route of an MBA or CFA and to instead learn by experience. I remain convinced that the best way to learn the market is by being in the market and making mistakes.

So what can you expect to read about here?

I don’t run anyone’s money but my own and my family’s. I have for 10 years and I’ve done well during that time. I can’t give you the exact figure, but I started in 2003 with about $20,000 and today that number into the seven figures, all while the S&P has done nothing. I run my own portfolios and do a lot of due diligence on my stock purchases. I buy mostly (but not exclusively) microcap stocks, primarily because the value most often lies in those stocks that are not followed by many others. This can cause my portfolio to have a lot of volatility and it has led to more than a few sleep deprived nights, but such is life and I have had good success with my strategy.

A lot of my success comes from looking for undervalued stocks in unloved but turnaround sectors. You probably won’t find many stocks talked about here that are discussed on CNBC, BNN or the Wall Street Journal. If you do, it will be a stock I bought well before it was talked about, and I turned out to be right.

What you can expect here is that I will write about the stocks I own, much as I did on the stockhouse blog I had, and much as I do on Investors Village. I will provide the thesis by which I am investing in, the catalysts that I anticipate to occur and the risks that I see if I am wrong.

One thing that I have found is that with writing a blog it is difficult to timely. I work a regular 8-4 job, and so I often am making portfolio adjustments in my lunch hour, and only able to really analyze and write about a position in the evenings or on weekends. Therefore I’ve come to use twitter extensively to help me have a more timely commentary. You can follow me @Lsigurd.

Share this:

Like this:

So, if you are out of Aurizon, you are clearly betting that the feasibility study for the Joanna project will be negative, right?

How can they turn their back on the project now, after having spent (and continuing to spend) more capital on the project? Does not the fact that they are continuing to drill (currently 4 active drills) imply that they will be moving forward with the project? Presumably, they know the answer to the feasibility study, which they will announce in less than 2 months…

No actually I can’t say that the feasibility study at Joanna even factored into my decision to sell Aurizon. The decision to sell was based on looking at the other available opportunities, in particular Atna at 95cents, Keegan at $3, Canaco at 87cents and gold standard with their potential and I just decided those were better opportunities for appreciation. When I compared the potential upside and downside of those opportunities to Aurizon it just seemed like they were better. So I sold Aurizon and bought more of those companies instead.

Have you looked at any of the Dominican Republic exploration plays?
GQC had a monster discovery hole. UGD also made news a month or so ago and EVR has nice land positions but is out of cash and has seen its price crushed.

Disclosure, I own a small cash position in GQC and have a much larger position in EVR.

Be careful with Arcan. Remember it is a small position for me. Also, I am not overboard about the company. I see the potential for the takeover and even on speculation the stock may rise. But the company has a lot of debt and so they are very susceptible to any turn in oil prices. I would keep Arcan small at best. I am reevaluating it this week to make sure I am not missing anything.

I’m happy to see it going up. I don’t think I have anything new to say about the company though. Things are progressing at Pinson, the production estimates I used still hold, it seems like a time to just sit on my hands and watch it play out. If Pinson is as profitable as I hope it will be and if there aren’t problems with start-up the stock should be worth a lot more than it is today.

I do not see a flaw but I have not had much opportunity (time issues) to review your posts. I used to be a commodity trader but I focus mostly on franchises–companies with economies of scale and customer captivity in either geography (Trash haulers and dumps, for example) or product space like, for example, WD-40). Of course, price is the issue. What price to pay.

I also focus on special situations. Since I try to find my own ideas, my portfolio can sometimes be eclectic and highly concentrated. Odds are I would not own similar companies–it is a big world.

My main point was not your ultimate choices/investments but your independent frame of mind. I will take that any day over MBAs, CFAs, Phds. etc.

My name is Jochem van Dalfsen, a Masters student in Finance at the University of Amsterdam.
The next several months I will have to write a Masters Thesis on a financial subject. I am really sure that I would like to write my thesis about a topic in the area of investing, since I have great interest in this area of finance (have been running investment club Heuristic Investments for the past four years) and I aim to pursuit a career in investing. In my studies, I’ve been strongly drawn to value investing. I believe it just suits me well. Straightforward, fundamental, probabilistic, disciplined, long-term-viewed, I love it. Therefore, I would like to write my Masters Thesis in the area of value investing.

I would like to ask you the following: Do you have any ideas on a specific research question in the area of value investing that you would like to have researched?
Any research question that has something to do with value investing would be great. If I like the question and decide to perform the research, then I will obviously send you a copy of the thesis when I’m finished.

Some requirements of the thesis are that it has to contribute to the existing academical research (new idea, extension of existing papers), the data needs to be available, the empirical method has to be strong and has to produce robust/reliable results (maybe add control variables, etc) and the research has to be done within three months.

Thank you very much for your time and with best regards,
Jochem van Dalfsen

Your information is very interesting. If you don’t mind me asking a few questions about you…What are your professional goals? Do you want to manage money for others, work for a fund or asset management firm? What is your current job?

I have been watching your analysis for a while. Congrats! I was first impressed with your analysis on MTG and NCT. Thanks for posting your ideas, IMH and NCT proved particularly profitable for me. thanks again

thoughts on ALS? not your typical micro cap stock but the mgmt is solid (very conducive to shareholders), very unique business model and less risky then most mining companies, alderon play will reap the benefits if iron ore/growth in china continues to stay strong. trading just over book value currently and very cheap from a valuation standpoint